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" An Old Town 
By the Sea" 



BY W. O FULLER 




Second Edition 



PUBLISHED BY THE 

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH MEMORIAL 

PORTSMOUTH. N. H. 

19 9 



"jlil Old Town bij the Seo 



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THEN the locomotive gave a scream, 
the engineer rang his bell, and we 
plunged into the twilight of a long 
wooden building, open at both ends. 
Here we stopped, and the conductor, thrusting 
his head in at the car door, cried out, 'Passen- 
gers for Ri vermouth !' " 

Every person properly familiar with the best 
books, as every person ought to be, should 
know that these are the words in which "Tom 
Bailey" describes his arrival back at the town 
of his birth — Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, 
scarcely concealed under the designation of 
"Rivermouth" in that immortal picture of New 
England boy life of half a century ago — "The 
Story of a Bad Boy." It is a long while since 
the present writer first read the story, upon its 
original appearance in Our Young Folks maga- 
zine. It must indeed have firmly caught his 
fancy then, for never in all the years since has 

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he passed through Portsmouth, without a lively 
recollection, as the train slows up in the long- 
not wooden now — "building open at both ends," 
that this is where "Tom Bailey" lived, and 
looking out of the car window he beholds the 
scene re-enacted there upon the platform as 
the "straight, brisk old gentleman," no less a 
person than Grandfather Nutter himself, wel- 
comes back to the austere New England of his 
birth the lad from New Orleans — that most de- 
lightful of all lads of fiction, the thoroughly nat- 
ural and altogether lovable young rascal Tom 
Bailey — the Bad Boy. 

The literary or historical pilgrim, forsaking 
the railroad train for a ramble about the glorious 
elm-arcaded streets of Portsmouth, feels him- 
self passing at once under the glamour asso- 
ciated with the things of that elder New Eng- 
land. Ancient houses and church buildings, 
the dreamy wharves whence a bustling West 
India trade, odorous with spices, long since 
withdrew itself, a certain decorousness of atmos- 
phere that envelops the life of the place, compel 
a welcome belief that here the obsessed and 
care-worn soul might for a season retire and 
find peace. Here in a peculiar measure the 
pilgrim encounters that flavor inseparable from 

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the period in which this part of the new world 
had its historical beginnings. 

For Portsmouth, as the years in America 
are reckoned, is a very aged place. The pic- 
turesque banks of the Piscataqua were ex- 
plored first in 1 603 by Martin Pring, followed 
in eleven years by the romantic and adventu- 
rous John Smith, to whose memory a shaft was 
in later years erected upon one of the Isles of 
Shoals. It was Smith who prepared and laid 
before Prince Charles a map of this seacoast, 
whereupon that scion of royalty gave to the 
country the name of New England. In 1623 
John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges, friends 
of Smith's, securing a grant of land comprising 
what is now New Hampshire, sent out a settling 
party. In 1631 an additional party came and 
built the "Great House," the first building to be 
put up in Portsmouth. In 1653 the township 
was incorporated under this name. So Ports- 
mouth is very old. 

The town lay in the main line of travel 
that ran from Boston out to all the region lying 
to the north. By land and by sea it was 
stirred in that earlier day by the active life of 
the young and growing nation. At its famous 
taverns — the Earl of Halifax, Stoodley's, and 

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others---men whose names now linger upon the 
tongue of romance found their "warmest wel- 
come." Washington, Lafayette and John 
Hancock ; Louis Philippe and his two brothers, 
banished from France and on their way to visit 
General Knox at his distant chateau in Thom- 
aston ; the dignified and portly Knox himself, on 
frequent occasions — these and many others of 
the historical figures of early times have tested 
the hospitalities of the private homes and public 
inns of Portsmouth. Of those private homes, 
the men and women who dwelt in them, and 
the history and gossip that hover about them 
still, delightful chapters have been written. 
Many of these houses stand today, examples of 
a handsome and stately architecture whose 
charm the modern builder seems unable quite 
to grasp. 

One may spend a chance hour in Ports- 
mouth, equipped with the receptive mind, and 
be very sure of taking away something delightful 
to remember. If time permits a longer stay, 
with a visit to the spots of historic interest, as 
well as some having to do with the more mod- 
ern life of the community, pushing so far per- 
haps as to Kittery and the interesting navy yard 

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across the "singing river," then may nnuch in- 
deed be found to satisfy the inquiring spirit. 

Singularly enough, until the present time, 
amid its many memorials of the past, the old 
town possessed none to which the public en- 
joyed the privilege of access. Occasionally 
upon sufferance the chance visitor was admitted 
to an inner view of an old house whose outward 
appearance had charmed the eye and stirred 
the imagination ; but there opportunity spent 
itself. 

Among the poets and authors whose poems 
and writings have illuminated the past of Ports- 
mouth, Thomas Bailey Aldrich clearly stands 
pre-eminent. This is the place of his birth, 
and it was in the house, now 45 Court street, 
owned by his maternal grandfather, Thomas 
Darling Bailey (the "Nutter House" of the 
story) , that he spent those juvenile years which 
are described with such accuracy in his early 
prose writing, "The Story of a Bad Boy." In 
this book, and in his novels "Prudence Pal- 
frey" and "The Queen of Sheba," Portsmouth 
figures beneath the thinnest of disguises as 
"Rivermouth." In the maturer work of his 
later years he harks back to the place of his 
early recollections. In "An Old Town By The 

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Sea" we find it set forth with a closeness of 
detail and that richness of humorous fancy and 
allusion that are such distinguishing features of 
Aldrich's prose. In his poetry too appear many 
allusions taking rise in the poet's memory of 
the years spent at the quaint old seaport town. 

It was a happy thought that inspired the 
Portsmouth people, on the death of Mr. Aldrich 
in 1907, to acquire the Court street house and 
set it apart as a memorial to the distinguished 
poet. In the years since the death of Grand- 
father Nutter (it is difficult to think of him by 
any other name than that of the story) the 
house had passed into alien hands. The 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich Memorial was formed 
and incorporated and a fund of ten thousand 
dollars raised by popular subscription in sums 
from one dollar to one thousand dollars. The 
old house was bought. Mrs. Aldrich and Major 
Talbot Aldrich, the poet's surviving son, and 
surviving members of the Bailey family, became 
interested and work was begun restoring the 
house and garden to their former condition, as 
set forth with such photographic fidelity in "The 
Story of a Bad Boy."' 

"The Nutter House has been in our family 
nearly a hundred years and is an honor to the 

(9) 



builder .... Such timber and such worlcmanship 
do not often come together in houses built now- 
adays. Imagine a low-studded structure, with 
a wide hall running through the middle .... On 
each side of the hall are doors .... opening into 
large rooms wainscoted and rich in wood-carv- 
ings about the mantel-pieces and corners. The 
walls are covered with pictured paper, repre- 
senting landscapes and sea-views." 

Painstaking labor has brought back the 
Nutter House so closely to the conditions that 
characterized it when it sheltered the boy 
Aldrich ("Tcm Bailey") that the visitor famil- 
iar with the book might well marvel at the fi- 
delity with which the man writing in middle life 
could recall the picture of his boyhood home, 
did we not remember that the faculty of obser- 
vation that usually distinguishes literary genius 
is a gift bestowed in very early life. 

"A wide staircase leads from the hall to 
the second story," write Tom Bailey in these 
juvenile memoirs. " . . . . Over this is the 
garret. 1 need not tell a New England boy 
what a museum of curiosities is the garret of a 
well-regulated New England house of fifty or 
sixty years standing. Here meet together, as 
if by some preconcerted arrangement, all the 

do) 



broken-down chairs of the household, all the 
spavined tables, all the seedy hats, all the in- 
toxicated looking boots, all the split walking- 
sticks that have retired from business, 'weary 
with the march of life.' 

"My grandfather's house stood a little way 

back from the main street In the rear was 

a pleasant garden." 

"Nothing among my new surroundings 
gave me more satisfaction than the cozy sleep- 
ing apartment that had been p;eparedfor my- 
self. It was the hall room over the front door. 
I had never before had a chamber all to myself, 
and this one, about twice the size of our state- 
room on the Typhoon, was a marvel of neatness 
and comfort. Pretty chintz curtains hung at 
the window, and a patch quilt of more colors 
than were in Joseph's coat covered the little 
truckle-bed. The pattern of the wall paper left 
nothing to be desired in that line. On a gray 
background were small bunches of leaves, unlike 
any that ever grew in this world ; and on every 
other bunch perched a yellow-bird, pitted with 
crimson spots, as if it had just recovered from 
a severe attack of the small-pox. That no such 
bird ever existed did not detract from my ad- 
miration of each one. There were two hundred 



and eighty-six of these birds in all, not counting 
those split in two where the paper was badly 
joined. I counted them once when I was laid up 
with a fine black eye, and falling asleep imme- 
diately dreamed that the whole flock suddenly 
took wing and flew out of the window. From 
that time 1 was never able to regard them 
merely as inanimate objects." 

Tom Bailey's little room exists today as it 
existed in that halcyon period of golden boyhood 
that the book recalls. Here is the "wash-stand 
in the corner," the "looking-glass in a filigreed 
frame," the "high-backed chair studded with 
brass nails like a coffin," and that precious 
shelf of books, with the identical volumes out of 
which the boyish Aldrich drank his first inspira- 
tions of poetry and romance. Never could be 
imagined a "boy's room" more nearly perfect 
in these essentials dear to the boyish heart. So 
also reappear the other rooms of the house, 
furnished again with the heirlooms brought back 
by the members of the family among whom 
they had been dispersed. Even to the mi- 
nutest details the place presents a faithful tran- 
script of the typical New England hom.e of 
three-quarters of a century ago. The garden 
at the rear of the house has been restored and 

(12) ';. 



here in luxuriance bloom the numerous flowers 
mentioned in Mr. Aldrich's poems. 

In a corner of the garden there has been 
erected a fire-proof building, in which have 
been disposed the literary and other treasures 
gathered by Mr. Aldrich during his busy and 
happily-endowed lifetime. Here is the table 
upon which he wrote the book so intimately as- 
sociated with this house ; here are priceless 
first editions, autographs, portraits, silver of 
peculiar beauty and interest, countless objects 
beautiful and rare, loaned to the Memorial by 
Mrs. Aldrich. Upon it all looks down benignly 
the portrait of the Poet. 

In the roll of our country's great poets and 
writers none other has left so intimate and 
absorbing a story of his youth as the classic 
from which the foregoing extracts are taken. 
The opportunity to bring together the house and 
story was unique. It has been seized upon and 
developed with exceeding taste. 

The visitor to the house finds the old door 
with the brass knocker and the old door-plate 
bearing Thomas Darling Bailey's name. Inside, 
if he will be at pains to read the book, he will 
encounter such startling accuracy of details, 
down to Grandfather Bailey's actual walking- 

(13) 



stick standing in its accustomed corner in the 
prim, wainscoted hall, that he finds himself 
transported to the very chapters and atmosphere 
of the story. Tom Bailey, Miss Abagail and 
Kitty Collins are no longer vague characters of 
fiction, but veritable persons upon whom the 
visitor discovers himself happily calling. There 
is nothing like this to be encountered else- 
where in America. 

To the lover of a good story there is no 
higher pleasure possible than to com.e upon the 
scene of its chapters and discover nothing want- 
ing. This in the most satisfying sense is the 
experience of the sentimental visitor to the 
Nutter House. And not alone in respect of the 
story which it illustrates is the house destined 
to become famous. It would be difficult to im- 
agine a more successful instance than this pre- 
sents of the rescue of an old place. "From 
cellar to attic" one perceives the absolutely 
faithful preservation, not only in details but of 
the spirit of a house of the long ago, that van- 
ishing period of our grandfathers. As time 
goes on, the faithfulness of this restoration, and 
its importance as a historical as well as literary 
New England landmark, will be increasingly 
accentuated. For a comparison, in the com- 

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pleteness of the achievement and the wealth of 
Hterary treasure and association gathered in its 
museum, one must turn to the Shakespeare 
Memorial upon the banks of the Avon. 

The Memorial was formally dedicated on 
June 30, 1908, by public services which all 
Portsmouth gathered to take part in. A bril- 
liant company of literary and public men and 
women came from afar to do honor to the 
memory of their gifted friend. It was the uni- 
versal opinion, which the general public will 
more and more come to recognize, that Ports- 
mouth in thus honoring the dead Poet will not 
the less bring honor to itself ; and that the 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich Memorial, upon a plan 
so adm.irably conceived and carried out, will 
become a literary shrine to which will turn in 
the progress of time the feet of an appreciative 
nation. 



The reprinted paragraphs are used with permission of 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., authorized publishers of the works of 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 



H 73" 78 5451 



